TRY AS I MAY

Try as I may, I'm still having problems with an internal promise I made to myself.

My dilemma has to do with the "Anti-Penn State" articles that continue to be printed day after nauseating day and my internal promise not to respond in this blog.

I made my own contribution in a previous blog with my vilification of the decisions made by the Penn State brass. I also criticised the overwhelming community support shown before, and after the accusations against Sandusky became public.

One assumes these were similar to those rendered by members of Bernie Madoff's family at the time the financial fecal matter hit the fan.

But, Penn State denials were a little different if you had spent any time in this extremely rural area of the state.

It reminded me a little of the story about a very unhappy committee member in a Kentucky political PAC group run by a rather aggressive and non-attractive husband and wife.

The critic, upon announcing his resignation, asked the unkind question, "If you two get divorced - will you still be brother and sister?".

I wouldn't go that far although my first blog may have suggested as much. I met lot's of good non-related people up there.

At first, I figured one explanation for their unswerving loyalty to Sandusky, Spanier, Paterno etc, was one of misplaced loyalty.

It was easy to assume that if you chose to live up there year round in the middle of nowhere you probably didn't have much else to stimulate your life than your commitment after you signed the "Penn State Football Pledge".

Of course, there was the annual State College Craft Fair, the excellent community playhouse down the road, and of course, the magnificient Toftrees resort with it's fantastic golf course.

Finally, my conclusion was that their reaction was just another of the predictable follow-up stages of grief.

Nowadays, we're faced with the other side of the coin - those who absolutely refuse to take any prisoners in their character assassinations of anyone tangentially involved with Penn State - either as a player, student, or vendor.

That presumably includes any of us who may have purchased the bread or meat sauce products endorsed by Paterno in his heyday and for which he donated all the monies received to the university.

Please understand. There is no intention here to wipe out or bury in the sand the deserved ramifications for those who "knew and said nothing."

However, this presumes the accusations are accurate - and that we will ever discover with reliability just who knew and did nothing.

There is a clause included in litigation - particularly involving legal accusations of various business entities - but also employed in the United States Navy sexual harassment suits a few years back.

It is called "knew or should have known"

It's a small clause, sometimes included in a boiler plate legal complaint, regardless of it's inappropriate insertion in the matter to be decided.

It speaks to reasonable and necessary behavior by people in charge.

In some strange way it's being invoked these days by almost any critic of Penn State who seemingly have now found their voice - and possibly couldn't get good game seats at Beaver Stadium.

It particularly has application to those who are denying the qualifications of any coach seeking to replace Joe Paterno if they had ever passed through the hallowed gates of State College - even by mistake (which is hard to do).

Having read the various sports articles about Penn State, written in heretofore thought-of-as responsibile sports publications, I find that the writers are playing hell with my rather sensitive gag reflex.

This happens most of the time when confronted by the irrational responses of the most ardent Penn State critic as I attempt to complete my Evelyn Wood perusal of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on- line sports columns.

I forget that some of these columns/blogs allow for the printing of the readers response to the opinion of the column's author - and that I've wandered too far into 'the Woods'.

My conclusion is, "there has to be one helluva lot of angry people out there in the sports fanatic world - who have never had a pause switch on either their mouth or typing hand."

I grew up during the irresponsible period of Joe McCarthy tactics".

I saw the careers of many talented and responsible members of the artistic community ruined by the accusations that almost anybody was willing to support in the guise of misplaced patriotism..

This phenomena is an interesting topic and one we'll pursue later in depth.

My failure to abide by my internal "try as I may" promise (above) is reflective of my growing concerns about the outrageous sputum from the mouths of the unconscious PSU critics.

There is always another side to an equation and one for which I apologize for enlisting now as I'm adding length to an already long blog.

It's one I'm starting to see slowly arise in an almost Phoenix fashion 'out of the ashes' to counter unfair commentary..

I observe the latter constantly as I review the media's abuse of the normal pendulum path of any topical subject as it moves along it's continuom.

Like any unfair critique, it's a view that refuses to consider the positive, particularly if it fails to support their allegation.

One such example of the latter bias is the Penn State IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon. (or THON as they call it)

A flyer I viewed recently, refers to it as a year long fund raising effort that culminates in February with a two-day no-sitting, no-sleeping dance marathon.

Yeah, I know. Similar to my own college fraternity days spent elsewhere, there will be critics coming out of the woodwork.

Some will conclude that up in Happy Valley it's probably just a bunch of loud naive kids dancing around wearing beer stained football sweatshirts that they never took off after their stand-in outside of Paterno's house.

Actually, it's about more than 350 Penn State student organizations with a mission to conquer childhood Cancer.

Last year they raised a record $9.56 million - 97% of which went directly to the Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital.(almost unheard of in any fundraising activity.)

Maybe you can excuse "dem kids" if a few of those dummies, while stumbling around the floor, occasionally pause to shout, "We Are Penn State!"(too).

They really are.